


Out of Time

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Emma&Belle Friendship, F/M, Rumbelle - Freeform, Season 3 AU, Spinner!Rum, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2020-02-26 17:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18721930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Belle is the one to be sucked into Zelena’s time portal with Emma, and they find themselves in a very different time to the one they had anticipated, arriving to see the confrontation between Hook and a pre-Dark One Rumpelstiltskin. They manage to return to the future, but with some unintentional stowaways. With Rumpelstiltskin removed from his own timeline, the universe throws a fit, and it’s a race against time to set things straight.





	1. Chapter 1

 

Belle took a deep breath and pushed open the door to the sheriff’s station. She didn’t want to be the harbinger of bad tidings, especially when everyone was getting ready to celebrate new life and new hope.

All the same, something about Zelena’s disappearance just didn’t sit right with her, and far be it from her to sweep something under the carpet and pretend that everything was ok when potentially the entire town was at risk. If Zelena was going to come back at the eleventh hour and cause havoc, then she wanted to be prepared.

As she entered, Belle found that Emma was looking just as despondent as she felt herself.

“Not in the party spirit either, huh?”

Emma looked up guiltily. “Oh. Erm. Hi, Belle.”

“It’s ok, you don’t need to pretend to be happy on my account.”

“I’m glad I’m not the only one who can’t seem to muster up any enthusiasm about the whole thing.” Emma let out a long sigh and waved Belle over to the desk. “So, what’s eating you? I doubt it’s the same thing that’s eating me.”

“It’s Zelena.” Belle leaned against the desk, grimacing as Emma groaned at the mention of the witch. “I know, I know, I want to forget all about her too, but I just can’t. There’s something about her demise that seems too convenient, you know? Even if she did self-destruct like on the video, what happened to her… remains? She must have left some trace behind, but there’s nothing. What if this is just another way for her to cause trouble? Make us think she’s gone for good and then pop up just when we thought we were finally rid of her.”

“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it myself.” Emma gave a huff of dry laughter. “Your worries are way more valid than mine at the moment; I feel stupid in comparison.”

“I don’t know, everyone has different priorities. What have you been thinking about?”

“It’s this baby. I know that the circumstances can’t be helped, and I know that Mom and Dad went through just as much trauma with this one as they did with me, but that doesn’t stop me being jealous that my brother gets to grow up with both his loving parents and I didn’t. I don’t think it’s even jealousy, really. Now that he’s here I just don’t understand my place in this world anymore. I had a life in New York, and it was really good, even if it wasn’t real. And now Neal’s gone, and I just think that maybe it would be better if I went back and bowed out.” She sighed. “Like I said, compared to fears of wicked witches rising from the grave, it’s fairly petty, but I can’t help it.”

“I think it’s perfectly valid for you to have mixed feelings about the whole thing. These are very strange times that we’ve found ourselves in, and we have to make the best of it. All the same, I think that your parents would be devastated if you were to leave Storybrooke. They still love you and care for you, but naturally they’re going to show it in a different way to you than they show it to the baby.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I can feed and dress myself and articulate my feelings, for one. I guess that we’ve been separated so many times that it feels normal to anticipate another separation. I don’t want it, and I know that they don’t want it either, but sometimes we don’t get what we want.”

“Maybe you need to think about it in a different way. If we hadn’t all had to go back to the Enchanted Forest and you hadn’t had to go to New York, you would have stayed in Storybrooke, and put roots down here, and this second pregnancy would probably have happened anyway. You wouldn’t have left then, because you would have had the time to get used to it.”

Emma nodded. “Yeah, even back in Neverland, Mom was saying that she wanted to have another baby. I guess it was kind of inevitable. It’s just going to take time to get to grips with the idea of having a sibling thirty years my junior. We have a weird family tree.”

“I can’t argue with you there, but then my fiancé’s over three hundred years old so I don’t think I have a leg to stand on.”

“Fiancé, huh?” Emma grinned. “When did that happen?”

“Last night. I guess that’s why I’m so worried about Zelena.”

“Yes, right, we were talking about the possibility of more calamitous happenings, not bemoaning my state of adult childhood.”

“It’s ok, I can tell that you really needed to get it off your chest. I don’t know if I’m qualified to give advice, but I hope I’ve helped in some way.”

“Yes, I think you have. It’s good to talk to someone about it. I didn’t really feel like I could go to anyone else about it because it just felt mean when everyone’s so relieved that the little one’s ok. I hope they name him soon; I can’t keep calling him Little Brother.”

Belle failed to hold back a laugh, and Emma joined her in giggles.

“Anyway, how’s Gold holding up?” she asked once composure had returned.

“All right, I think. I don’t know. He doesn’t want to talk about it, which makes me think that he probably should talk about it, but it’s not my place to force him to confront these things if he doesn’t feel up to it yet. I just want to make sure that he’s safe.”

“I know that feeling. I’m just not sure what we can do about it. Coming to think of it, it would probably be a good idea to grab Zelena’s pendant from the barn. I can’t believe that I forgot to pick it up. Of all the things that might prove useful if she was trying to return, the source of all her power is probably up there on the list.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

Belle followed Emma out of the station towards the yellow bug, and Emma paused before unlocking it.

“Are you sure that you want to come along?” she said. “If Zelena is up to her tricks again, then…”

“Then I would very much like to be there to smack her round the face,” Belle said. Emma’s eyes widened at her words and she opened the passenger door, gesturing for Belle to get in.

“You know, over the last few days I’ve really learned to appreciate your gumption,” she said. “I guess because you weren’t around during the curse and I never really got the chance to get to know you afterwards, I tend to think of you and Rumpel as a pair.”

“A lot of people make that mistake.” Belle sighed. “I am my own person, I always have been, and I’m so sick of everyone measuring my worth in relation to me being with Rumpel. I’m not a person to them, I’m just a pawn that they can use to get back at him. Why do you think I was locked up under the hospital throughout the first curse? It wasn’t anything I’d done to warrant that, oh no. Regina just wanted to make sure she had a bargaining chip in case she ever needed to get one over on Rumpel.”

“I’m sorry, Belle. I really am.”

“It’s all right. It’s not as if you knew I was down there.”

“Yeah, but if I had then I would have tried to get you out.”

Belle smiled. “I know you would. That’s why you’re the saviour.”

“Please don’t call me that. I don’t feel particularly saviour-like at the moment. Not even my normal superpowers are working at the moment. I can’t help feeling like all this can be traced back to Greg. If I’d known straight away that he was lying and here for nefarious purposes, then we never would have gone to Neverland, never would have accidentally unleashed Pan on the town; you guys would never have gone back to the Enchanted Forest, and we could have avoided all this pain and heartbreak.”

“It’s not your fault, Emma. Things are just miserable sometimes. Even now, when we ought to be happy that everything’s over, neither of us really are.”

It was strange to be having this conversation with Emma. They had never really interacted before outside of Emma needing Belle’s expertise for something, and it was nice to get to know each other as people, with no hidden agenda in the background waiting to strike. Belle was about to make some comment to keep the chatter flowing, but before she could do so, they had rounded the corner that brought them onto the barn road, and the words died in her throat.

“Well, that certainly does not look good.” Emma glanced over at Belle and then looked back through the windscreen at the pillar of raw magic that was shooting out of the top of the barn. It was the colour of flame, swirling like molten lava, and Belle knew that whatever type of spell it was, it was something incredibly powerful. She had never paid all that much attention when Rumpel had been brewing potions and inventing spells up in his laboratory; she was interested in the magic that he allowed her to see but had learned not to question the secretive things.

If this was related to Zelena’s attempt to break the laws of magic and turn back time, then it was something that no magician had ever attempted to control before.

Emma continued up the lane towards the barn a little way until the bug’s engine gave out with a splutter.

“Magic and technology don’t mix,” Belle said. “Rumpel’s warned me about it before. The stronger the spell, the more widespread and potent its affects.”

They got out of the car and made their way towards the barn on foot. As they got closer, the roar of the magic grew louder and louder until they had to shout to make themselves heard over the din.

“Ok, whatever this is, I really think that we’re going to need back-up!” Emma yelled. “How are you supposed to switch this thing off? Belle, I really think that you ought to wait in the car.”

“And let you be blown to smithereens by whatever this is? Not likely!”

Emma wrenched the barn door open and was almost blown away by the force of the magic that was spiralling inside. Holding on tight to the frame, she peered inside. Belle followed her lead.

The spell was coming from a circle marked out in the dirt floor, with four points facing along compass lines. There in the centre, fuelling the magic, was Zelena’s pendant.

“I knew it was too good to be true!” Emma groaned. “Why does this always happen just when we think that everything’s solved?”

“Magic’s a law unto itself. If that’s what I think it is, then we want to get as far away from it as possible.”

“Yeah, I don’t exactly feel very safe here,” Emma agreed. “It looks like a bean portal but going up instead of down.”

“It’s a portal through time and space, rather than just space,” Belle explained. “Come on, let’s get out of here before something happens. It looks really unstable. Maybe if we leave it alone it might burn itself out.”

“Yeah, I have a whole new appreciation of your proxy knowledge of magic now.”

Emma let go of the doorframe and took a step away, back towards the car, and in that moment, time seemed to slow down to a crawl. Emma was moving away, and a tendril of lava-like magic pulsed out from the portal, snaking itself around her ankle. The portal was not going to stop until someone had gone through it.

“Belle!”

Belle grabbed Emma’s hand, but the force of the portal was too much for the both of them, and she felt herself being ripped away from the door where she was holding on for dear life. Her fingers could take no more, and she let go.

But she did not let go of Emma. Whatever might befall them at the other end of this journey, she wasn’t going to leave Emma to go through it alone, and Belle clung to her hand as they were both pulled into the swirling golden vortex and shot into the past.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Belle had never gone through any kind of portal before, let alone a time-space one, and she could safely say that she never wanted to have the experience again. The noise was deafening; she could hardly hear herself think, let alone hear anything that Emma might be saying to her.

Luckily it didn’t appear that Emma was saying anything: she had her eyes screwed up and her mouth set in a grimace. Belle wished that she could close her eyes too, but she was too petrified, transfixed by the swirling portal around her and unable to look away. The colours were blinding, and the magic was moving faster and faster as it transported them to whatever their destination might be. Belle knew the mechanics of how the magic beans worked, and all manner of other different modes of transportation between magical worlds, but this was something unknown to her and to Rumpel. Displacement in time went against the laws of magic and had never been attempted before. Not even Rumpel had gone against those laws, as much as she knew he wanted to. All she could do was hang onto Emma for dear life and hope that wherever they ended up, the locals would be friendly and not burn them at the stake for having fallen out of the sky.

The portal spat them out without warning. One moment they were still being blown and battered about inside it, and the next they were landing with a thud on what turned out to be thankfully soft, if somewhat muddy, grass. Belle groaned at the impact, taking a moment to get her bearings before sitting up. Beside her, Emma was getting to her feet as well; at least they were still together, wherever they might be. Looking around, it seemed that fate had been kind to them. They had landed in the middle of a field and there were no other people in the immediate vicinity who might have seen their arrival, but Belle could hear the sounds of a town not too far away. There was a salty smell in the air, and she surmised that they were probably near the sea.

“So, where the hell are we?” Emma held out a hand to help Belle up to her feet. “And probably more importantly,  _when_  the hell are we?”

They made their way over to the edge of the field, moving furtively as they came closer to the sounds of civilisation, and they ducked down to peer over the hedge. They were halfway up a hill, looking over a couple of small villages and a port town further away, with tall ships docked in the little harbour and people bustling here and there.

Belle gave a little gasp of recognition as the geography became clear to her.

“Belle?” Emma raised an eyebrow. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes. I know where we are.”

“Well, that makes one of us.”

Belle pointed out the port. “This is the Frontlands. It’s not too far from where I was brought up in the Marchlands.” She gestured behind them. “They’re over there behind this hill. Rumpel’s castle shouldn’t be too far from here; he was from the Frontlands originally and he liked to stay close to his roots.”

“Fair enough.” Emma paused. “So, we know where we are, but I don’t think that’s going to help us. We can’t exactly storm the Dark Castle and ask the Rumpelstiltskin of an unknown time frame to help us. What if you’re there? What happens if your past self meets your present self? Will that alter history?”

“I’ve read enough about time travel to be able to answer that one with a definite affirmative,” Belle said dryly. “No, I can’t recall any incidents in my own past where I met myself from the future.”

“Well, it was worth a shot. Maybe if we hid you somewhere, I could go in alone. I mean, I’d be a stranger to Rumpelstiltskin now, so it shouldn’t change things too much.”

“It’s true that you’re less likely to cause a temporal catastrophe than I am, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as that. I have no idea how far we’ve come, but I know that we’re fairly far back in time. I can tell from the landscape. Much of the Marchlands and Frontlands were razed during the first Ogre Wars. It hasn’t had time to grow back yet. In fact, it looks like it’s still burning in the distance.”

Emma followed Belle’s eyeline over the barren horizon. “Well, that inspires a lot of confidence.” She sighed. “How are we going to get back, Belle? You don’t have magic, I don’t have magic, and we’ve got no way of getting a message to the future to get them to send help.”

“Don’t dismiss it too freely yet,” Belle said. She checked that there was no-one about and pulled herself up over the hedge, ignoring the scratches gained to her hands in the process. “Even if we can’t go to Rumpel for advice, he’s not the only magician in the Enchanted Forest. There has to be someone in the town who can help us.”

“All right. I guess that moping isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

“That’s the spirit. Now, I think the first order of the day ought to be getting ourselves some disguises. As fetching as your red leather jacket is, it’s going to open a few eyes, and we really don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

“Anyone would think that you fell through portals into different worlds and times on a regular basis,” Emma mused, seeming to be quite happy to let Belle take charge of their predicament.

Belle shrugged. “I haven’t had all that many adventures of my own, but I’m well-read enough to know how to avoid all the usual pitfalls that people fall into when they find themselves in foreign territory.” They had reached the first of the small villages – barely more than a hamlet really – on the way to the town, and Belle spied laundry hanging on a line. There were a couple of rough wool cloaks among the shirts and linens. Jackpot.

“I think we’ll have to borrow these. Hopefully the owner won’t mind them going missing for an afternoon.” She looked around furtively to make sure that there was no-one about – the house didn’t appear to have anyone inside it – and she hopped over the fence to grab the cloaks off the line.

“I’m really glad that you think we’re only going to be here for an afternoon,” Emma said, following her over the fence and taking one of the cloaks, wrapping herself up in it. It was a warm, sunny day, not really the weather for cloaks, but needs must, and Belle didn’t fancy stealing an entire change of clothes. At least they looked less conspicuous now than their modern attire would make them.

“I’ve got a theory about how the time-space portal works, but I’d want to speak to a magician before I made any concrete predications about how we’re going to get back.” She had a small ray of hope that their return to the future would be easy, but anything to do with magic was rarely simple on the first try.

They could move more quickly now that they were no longer having to watch out for locals and be ready to jump behind a tree at a moment’s notice, and they had soon passed through the villages and were on their way to the town properly. The smell of salt-water and the squawking of seagulls filled the air, and for a moment, Belle felt a melancholy sense of nostalgia for the Enchanted Forest of her youth, before the ogres had come and ruined everything. Wherever they might be in time, she was sure that they had gone far back past the time of her birth.

“Wait.” Emma stopped dead in her tracks as they came down the street towards the docks. “I know that ship.”

Belle looked at the vessel directly in front of them, and her insides did a funny somersault when she realised that she knew it too.

“The Jolly Roger. That means Hook must be around here somewhere.”

“Right.” Emma wrinkled her nose. “This could be awkward. Still, there’s no reason why we should bump into him, and there’s every hope that even if we do, he’ll have forgotten all about us by the time he meets us in the future. This is ridiculous. I keep expecting to start vanishing any minute, like Marty McFly.”

Belle did not understand the reference, but something more important had captured her attention, and she grabbed Emma’s arm, bundling her out of the street and into the nearest doorway.

“What is it?”

“Rumpel.”

“What? Where?”

“Over there!”

Emma followed Belle’s gesticulations, and they both watched as Rumpelstiltskin hobbled down the street as fast as he could, leaning on his stick. Emma raised an eyebrow.

“No offence to the man who will be your fiancé in the future, but he really doesn’t look like a powerful magician.”

Belle shook her head. “No, he’s not. Not at this moment, at least. This is before he was the Dark One, back when he was just a spinner, with no magic.”

“So, we’ve gone back a really long time, then.”

“Yes. At least three hundred years. Rumpel’s had the curse all that time. Hook spent most of it in Neverland. That’s why they can both be here at this point in time.” Belle sighed. “Why would the portal bring us here? Why go so far back?”

“Maybe it’s like a bean,” Emma suggested. “It takes you to the place that you’re thinking about at the time.”

“I certainly wasn’t thinking about this place.”

“Me neither… Although… You were thinking about Rumpel, weren’t you?”

“I was wondering if I was ever going to see him again, yes. I guess that question’s been answered in the most ironic way possible.” Belle continued to watch as Rumpel made his way down the street. He seemed to be heading straight for the Jolly Roger. She knew that this could not be the confrontation in he had killed Milah; he had been the Dark One then. This must be the beginning of his and Hook’s acquaintance. “Were you thinking about Hook?”

“In among other things. Do you think that the portal brought us to this time period specifically because they’re both here at the same time?”

“Probably. It’s not the only time that they’ve met in the last three hundred years, but if this is the beginning, well, they do always say to start at the beginning.”

Emma looked at Belle. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Are you thinking that if the portal brought us to a pivotal moment between them, then we ought to go and see what’s going on in the hope that it might help us get back to Storybrooke?”

Emma nodded.

“In that case, yes, I’m thinking the same thing that you are.”

They left the doorway that they had been sheltered in and began to make their way down towards the Jolly Roger. Rumpel was boarding the ship now, and Belle and Emma snuck down behind some crates of ship’s biscuits to get the best vantage point of the deck. Hook was there, his usual swaggering self, and Belle noted that both hands were still intact at this point. It was good to have a frame of historical reference, even if she didn’t know what she was going to do with it yet.

“I wish I could hear what they were saying,” Emma muttered, trying to get comfortable behind the crates. No-one else in the docks paid them any mind; they were all too busy going about their own affairs to wonder at the women in borrowed cloaks in hiding. “It looks like they’re having some kind of argument. Given the animosity between the two of them that’s been bubbling for all these centuries, I really want to know how it all started.”

Belle wasn’t sure that she shared Emma’s enthusiasm. It was a long and complicated history, with bad blood aplenty on both sides. She didn’t think that she could watch it, but like in the portal, there was something that kept her rooted to the spot, unable to look away.

“What the?” Belle didn’t think that she’d ever heard Emma so indignant. “What in the hell? What kind of a jerk?” She continued to vent incoherently for a while as the one-sided duel for what was probably Milah’s honour began to take shape, until she ran out of fury and smacked the crate instead. “I can’t believe I considered dating him.”

Belle said nothing to that. She knew that nothing bad would happen to Rumpel; she knew that he would go on to live another three hundred odd years and meet her in the future.

All the same, that knowledge didn’t make it any easier to watch the confrontation that had begun it all.


	3. Chapter 3

Although it was horrible to watch the scene playing out on the Jolly Roger’s deck, Belle couldn’t help but notice Emma’s reaction to the whole thing, and although she knew her attention ought to have been focussed on Rumpel and his plight, she couldn’t help feeling somewhat vindicated in her opinion of Hook now that Emma was really witnessing his actions first hand.

Belle had never thought that Emma had taken her objections to the man seriously; for all that she may have forgiven and forgotten his misdeeds towards her, she had seemed very keen for everyone else to do the same. Now she was receiving an active reminder of his villainy, and she was quietly seething with fury. Eventually she stopped chuntering under her breath and sighed.

“I should have known better than to take him at face value when he always claimed to be the better man in this centuries-old feud,” she grumbled.

“Well, Rumpel’s not entirely blameless himself, but his antagonism comes a few more years down the line,” Belle said. “I think that this is where it all began.”

“Yeah. Why do we have to watch this? Is this the universe trying to tell us something?”

"I have no idea.” Belle’s hands flew to her mouth as Rumpel was knocked to the ground, and Emma had to grab the back of her cloak to prevent her from darting out from their hiding place and going straight to his side.

“We’re trying not to change anything, remember? I know it’s hard to watch, but we can’t intervene.”

Belle sagged back down against Emma with a sigh. “I wish that we could. Couldn’t we just make sure that he’s ok?”

“Belle, he can’t meet you now. He won’t meet you for another three centuries.”

“He won’t know it’s me. Not if I don’t tell him my name. If he recognises me in the future, then he’ll just put it down to me being a distant relative. He’s hardly going to think I’m the same person.”

She didn’t know why she was so desperate to go and speak to him. She knew more than anyone the consequences of meddling with magic beyond her understanding; Rumpel had warned her about it enough during her time in the Dark Castle. All the same, she couldn’t help but think that perhaps they had ended up in this time frame for a reason, and that Rumpel would be the key to getting them back home, even if he was not the Dark One at this point in time.

“We’re supposed to be finding a magician to get them to help us back to the future,” Emma said, but even as she spoke, Belle could see her resolve wavering, human nature winning out. “Earlier you said that you thought you had a theory for how we could get home. How badly do we need someone with magic for that?”

Belle shook her head. “Not very badly. It was only to confirm if my reasoning was correct.”

“What’s the reasoning?”

“We’ll be taken back of our own accord soon enough. I think the portal will re-open. Meddling with time is such a hugely magically illegal thing that has very far-reaching consequences. Magic with this much power always has fail-safes built in. Even the Dark Curse that brought us all to Storybrooke in the first place had fail-safes. Rumpel built in security measures. Zelena might have been unhinged, but she knew what she was doing when it came to the handling of such powerful magic. She would want to make sure that whatever she did in the past didn’t send things too far the other way and make her worse off than before when she returned to the future. I think that maybe the portal has only a temporary displacement effect, taking you back in time for just long enough to alter what you need to and then return.”

Emma pondered Belle’s reasoning for a long time. “That implies that in order to get back, we’re going to have to change something.”

Belle hadn’t thought about it like that, but the more she ruminated, the more the logic seemed to make horrible sense.

“Yes. I think we are. Hopefully something small that won’t cause too much of a lasting impact.”

Two of Hook’s crew were ‘assisting’ Rumpel back down the gangplank onto the docks, and Belle and Emma looked over at him.

“Maybe talking to him isn’t such a bad idea after all.”

Rumpelstiltskin began to hobble away from the Jolly Roger, not looking back in their direction, but before Belle and Emma could plan any further, one of pirates came over and moved one of the crates that they were hiding behind. He raised an eyebrow, and Emma made the decision for them, giving a definitive ‘nope’ and grabbing Belle, legging it away from the crates and the docks and following in the direction that Rumpel had gone.

They began to trail after him at a safe distance, but given his pace in comparison to their own, they soon caught him up. Emma nudged Belle.

“Go on. Go and talk to him.”

“I’ve got no idea what to say.”

“Oh, come on, there must be something, you’re engaged to him!”

“Not him. This Rumpel I’ve never known.”

“Well, either way, you’re better at this than I am. You’re nice. You’re good with people. I’m just… me.”

Belle conceded that point; Emma was an effective sheriff and a good advocate whenever there was a battle to be fought, but tact and sympathy were definitely areas where Belle scored higher. She took a deep breath and quickened her step to bring her up alongside Rumpel, Emma still following along behind them by a couple of paces. She touched his arm lightly, making him startle and look around warily at her.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” It was the eyes that got her, looking into the same deep brown eyes that she had looked into so many times in Storybrooke but finding no hint of recognition there. Rumpel had known her even when she had not known herself, and now she was a stranger to him, just a spectre from his future. Her tongue was lost for a moment. Seeing him so nervous and worn down by life in general when she had only ever known him cool and confident – except around her, of course – wasn’t something that she could really have prepared herself for. It had been different when she had been watching from a distance. Now she was close up. Far too close for comfort.

“I just wanted to see if you were all right,” she finished lamely, despite knowing full well that he was very far from all right and that any halfway observant person would be able to see that.

“I’ll be fine, thank you.” There were tears in his eyes, but his voice was still guarded, and it broke Belle’s heart to know that he had been so alone in the world as to be wary of the kindness of strangers.

“I saw what happened on the ship,” she said. Rumpel turned his face away, embarrassed. “I think you were very brave.”

“Hardly. I failed to save my wife. I knew I never had a chance. What was I thinking?”

It was incredibly tempting to tell him that Milah was safe and well and had orchestrated this entire plot herself, but Belle knew that would be altering far too much and could have terrible consequences down the line.

“You did it anyway, though,” she said instead. “Even though the odds weren’t in your favour, you still went to try. I’d say that was incredibly courageous.”

He looked back at her, searching her face for mockery, and on finding none, he gave her the briefest of weak smiles.

“Please, just let me and my friend see you safely home. You took quite a fall there and I want to make sure that you’re all right.”

Rumpel didn’t say anything, but he did not protest as Belle continued to walk alongside him, and Emma came up to take the other flank. They must have looked an odd sight to the other locals, but Belle was past the point of caring. Her focus now was on Rumpel, and then on getting home. Hopefully this brief interaction would be enough to take them back to Storybrooke, and if she had succeeded in bringing some measure of comfort to Rumpel along the way, then even better.

There was no further conversation until they were out of the port town and heading back up towards the small villages that Belle and Emma had already passed through earlier in the day.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Rumpel said eventually as they neared the house with glaring gaps on the line where they had stolen the cloaks. For a terrible moment, Belle wondered if that was in fact Rumpel’s house, but they walked on past it. She and Emma looked at each other.

“No, we’re not,” Emma said quickly. “We’re from… somewhere very far away.”

“Very far away,” Belle agreed.

“Really? Your accent’s Marchlands.”

“How interesting.” Belle was floundering more with every word, and she decided that changing the subject was the best tactic. “Where do you live?”

Rumpel gestured towards a small house at the end of the lane. The sun was beginning to go down, and Belle could see a little face with tousled dark hair watching at the window. Her heart leapt to her mouth. This was Bae, just a few years old and with his whole life ahead of him. Unbidden, the tears came into her eyes, and she wiped them on the edge of her cloak. Rumpel looked over at her, concerned.

“Are you all right?” How he could be so kind and attentive considering everything that he had been through himself already that day, Belle didn’t know. She nodded quickly.

“I’ll be fine.” It was embarrassing how choked her voice was. She felt a hand come and rub her shoulder awkwardly and looked up to see Emma looking at her with a similarly tearful expression. They could hardly tell Rumpel the real reason for their emotional state, but seeing Bae had brought back so many memories, and knowing what would happen in his future and being unable to prevent it was heartbreaking in so many ways.

“Please, do come in.” Rumpel opened the door for them and stepped aside to let them enter.

“We wouldn’t want to impose,” Belle said. “I mean, this is obviously going to be a difficult time for you.”

“I’d like to repay your kindness, if I can,” Rumpel said. “For a man like me, friendly words are sometimes hard to come by. Maybe some tea before you go on your way again.”

“Tea would be nice.” Belle hoped that he couldn’t hear her stomach gurgling beneath the folds of her cloak. She had no idea how long it had been since she’d last eaten, but they’d definitely missed the potluck at Granny’s and now she was feeling it.

She and Emma stepped into the small cottage and looked over at Bae as he came to meet his father at the door.

“Papa?” he whispered, half-hiding behind the spinning wheel. “Who are they?”

“These ladies just wanted to make sure your papa got home safely,” Rumpel said, crouching down to Bae’s level to ruffle his hair. “And he did.”

Bae was still looking at them through frightened eyes. “Where’s Mama?”

Rumpel gave a shaky sigh, scrubbing his hands over his face, and he took Bae’s hand, leading him to the other end of the room and sitting him down in front of the fireplace. Belle and Emma gave them some space, but Belle could still make out the words ‘Mama’s not coming back’, and when she glanced over her shoulder, Bae was hugging his father tightly.

She had not anticipated just how harrowing this experience was going to be. It had been bad enough watching the confrontation happen in real time, but now she was viewing the fallout from it. Knowing what she did about what would happen years down the line, at the separation between father and son and all the animosity that would simmer for centuries, she felt slightly nauseous. Looking at Bae and Rumpel now, though, she could quite see why Rumpel would be prepared to tear a world apart to try and get back to him. Theirs was a tight, fierce, nigh-unbreakable bond.

After a while, Rumpel had got Bae into bed, and he came back over to Belle and Emma, setting about getting the kettle and the tea leaves. Belle placed her hands gently over his shaking ones.

“Please, let me,” she said. “After the day you’ve had, the least I can do is make some tea.” She smiled at the memory of her time in the Dark Castle, her first evening there when she had chipped her cup. It seemed that she and Rumpel were destined always to be meeting over tea. “I have a lot of experience in making tea.”

Emma raised an eyebrow but said nothing, and Rumpel just gave her a grateful smile.

Belle busied herself with the tea things, wishing that she knew what to say to make the situation better without irreparably changing the future.


	4. Chapter 4

“You know, since we’ve been here, I’ve realised something incredibly profound.”

Belle looked up from the contemplation of her tea leaves at Emma’s words. Rumpelstiltskin had gone to see to his sheep in the fields that they had first landed in. Belle hoped that they weren’t too traumatised for the dramatic and sudden appearance of a portal in their field.

“What’s that?”

“You and Rumpelstiltskin are truly soulmates.”

Belle quirked an eyebrow. She knew that herself, of course, she had always known it. She just wondered where Emma had picked it up from in the short time that she had been around Rumpel’s spinner identity.

“You’re made for each other. No matter what time frame you’re in, you’re drawn to each other. It’s a bit like my parents, I suppose. They would always find each other no matter what was happening. They even found each other and were drawn to each other whilst they were cursed. I bet that if you’d been out and about in Storybrooke during the curse then you would have been drawn to Gold as well, and vice versa. There’s just something about the connection between you two.”

“It’s not the same here,” Belle said. “I mean, here, I know Rumpel, although not this version of him so to speak. I still know who he is; I know his story. I know this part of his life from his own retellings of it to me, even if I don’t know the man he was at the time. But this Rumpel doesn’t know me.”

“But he still trusts you implicitly. Even though he’s only just met you, and even though he’s had an absolute hell of a day, he still trusts you. More than he trusts me, I think.”

“I think that’s because I’m blending in better. You don’t have as much experience with the Enchanted Forest, especially not this part of it. For me, it’s practically like coming back home again. Albeit in a very different time period to my own. No offence, but it’s very obvious that you’re not from round here.”

“Well, that aside, I still think that there’s a connection between you, even here. Maybe it’s destiny.” Emma sighed and pushed her cold and only half-drunk tea to one side. “Maybe it’s not, maybe I am seeing things that aren’t there. Maybe I’m only seeing what I want to see. I never used to believe in true love and the whole notion of soulmates and all that. After everything that I’d been through in my life I just didn’t think it could be possible. Then of course, Henry arrived in my life, and then I met my mom and dad, and I saw the really powerful bond between them. And even though I saw that bond, I still didn’t think that it was something that I could have. It was something so special and unique. But then I see you and Rumpelstiltskin, and I think that if you two can keep it together and keep finding each other after everything that you’ve been through, then maybe there’s hope for me after all. I mean, not even death could keep you two apart.”

Belle reached across the table and patted Emma’s hand awkwardly. She herself was a tactile person and would comfort with touch as much as possible. It came naturally to her, but Emma was far more guarded.

“There is someone for everyone,” she said. “I don’t think that finding true love is out of reach for anyone. It might take a long time, after all, it took Rumpel three hundred years with me, but I am sure that it’s possible. Everyone deserves true love.”

“Yeah.” Emma snorted. “I don’t exactly have three hundred years though.”

Her gaze wandered across the small cottage to where Bae was sleeping. “What if Neal was it? What if he was my true love and I just didn’t realise at the time? Now I’ll never get that chance.”

Belle didn’t know what to say to that; there were no ready platitudes. She could say something about having loved and lost being better than never having loved at all, but it would sound trite and unsympathetic.

“We need to get back to Storybrooke,” Emma said, quickly changing the subject. “Do you think we’ve changed enough to alter history just a tiny bit and get us home, or do we have to do something dramatic?”

Belle shook her head. “I have no idea.” The longer they stayed here in the past with no signs of returning, the more she doubted her theory. “I’m beginning to think that neat as it is, my idea’s probably wrong. First thing tomorrow we’ll have to go in search of a magician and see if they can take us.”

“Why do you need a magician?”

Rumpelstiltskin had returned at that very moment, and Belle spun round on her stool to face him, aware of how overwhelmingly guilty she must look and not having a clue how to explain it.

“I, erm, well, as we said, we’re from somewhere very far away and we’re going to need magical assistance to get back home,” she said, the words falling over themselves in rapid fire to get them out without mangling the white lie too much.

“You’re from another realm entirely?” Rumpelstiltskin sounded wary.

Emma nodded. “Yeah… We kind of ended up here by accident. There was a portal, you see, and everything happened at once. We didn’t really have time to think about how we were going to get back.”

“Well, everyone talks about magic beans as ways to travel between worlds, but they’re incredibly rare.”

Both Belle and Emma knew that by this point in his life, Rumpel had already had very bad experiences with beans and travelling to other realms, and he was well within his rights to be nervous at the mention of them now.

“No, the magic we need is slightly more complex than a bean.”

“Where are you from?” Rumpelstiltskin asked. His grip on his stick was white-knuckled, and Belle saw the way that he took a couple of steps sideways to place himself between them and Bae. It broke her heart to see him so defensive when he had been so welcoming just a few moments before, although she understood why. All she had to do was re-convince him of their good intentions, and she really didn’t want to be caught up in a huge lie that might start to unravel around them at any moment. Thus far they had managed to avoid outright untruths by just avoiding talking about their unusual circumstances all together, but perhaps they might have to risk telling the truth this time.

Belle looked at Emma, who sagged visibly with a sigh, resigned to having to come clean.

“We’re from the future,” she muttered. “A portal brought us back in time and we’re waiting for it to take us back to where we came from.”

Rumpel shook his head. “That’s impossible. You can’t change the past, everyone knows that.”

“We’re really trying not to,” Belle said. “We just want to get back to our own time, but the portal was only designed to bring people back, not take them forward. We were hoping that it would take us back of its own accord, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen now, so we were hoping that a local magician might be able to give us a spell that would take us forwards.”

Rumpel still looked completely incredulous, and Belle was becoming increasingly desperate.

“What would make you believe me?” she asked.

Rumpel didn’t reply, he just came over and sat down on the stool next to Belle’s, staring hard into the middle distance as he tried to get his head around everything that he had just heard.

“Just… Give me a moment,” he said.

Belle was quite happy to give him as many moments as he needed.

“I…” Rumpel shook his head, still trying and failing to come to terms with the revelation. “I want to believe you, I really do. You’ve been so kind to me and Bae, and I don’t know why you would lie. I want to trust you. I do trust you. But time travel? That’s the thing of legends and stories.”

His words rang true; it was clear from his face that he really did want to believe them, but after everything that had happened to him today, this was just one upheaval too many. Belle took a deep breath. It was time to try a different tactic, something that would hopefully convince him.

“I know you in the future,” she said. “We’ll meet again there.”

Rumpel looked up sharply from his renewed contemplation of the fire.

“Really?”

Belle nodded. “Yes. We’ll know each other again, Rumpelstiltskin.”

“Pretty well, actually,” Emma added. Belle shot her a look and she threw her hands up in self-defence before miming zipping her lips.

“Really? Me and you?”

“Yes.” Belle wracked her brains for something about Rumpel that only he would know, something that she could use to prove their future intimacy. “I know that your first sheepdog was called Rain, because she loved going out in it.”

Rumpel smiled. “Oh, she loved water, that one. Sometimes I thought she must have been a fish in a previous life.” He paused. “What about Bae? Do you know him too?”

Belle nodded. “Yes. We’ll know him too.” She glanced over at Emma, and she saw the sadness pass across her face before she straightened out her expression, trying not to give away anything that would cause Rumpel alarm.

“What’s going to happen, then? How do we meet?”

“Well…” Belle was at a loss now, and she realised with a sinking feeling that she’d definitely dug herself into quite the hole. She had no idea what she was supposed to do. She couldn’t exactly tell Rumpel the entire history of the Dark One and the many years searching for Bae. Not only would that probably change history in the first place, far more than she had any desire to do, she really didn’t want to traumatise the poor man with the horrors that his future held. She especially didn’t want to do so now, when she had finally got him to accept their story and put his trust in her again.

“We can’t tell you,” Emma said quickly. “The more you know about the future, the more you might try to change the outcomes and then everything will fall apart, and you and Belle may never meet again. That’s the whole reason why people aren’t supposed to travel through time in the first place. Like we said, we only came here by accident and we’re trying to make sure that everything stays the same. Otherwise, we might go back to the future and find that it doesn’t exist anymore.”

Belle wondered what would happen if their actions prevented Rumpel from becoming the Dark One, and what kind of world they might return to. If it hadn’t been for his intervention in the Ogre Wars in Avonlea, then it was highly likely that she wouldn’t be there. She shuddered at the thought, not wanting to know what that might mean for her back in the past and hoping that her continued existence here was proof enough of her survival in the present.

Thankfully, Rumpelstiltskin seemed happy enough to accept Emma’s explanation, and he didn’t ask any more questions. Perhaps he thought that knowing the future would just be too much to handle on top of everything else.

The fire was beginning to burn low, and Rumpelstiltskin went over to see to it and to get them some dinner. As grateful as Belle was for his hospitality, she really hoped that they would be able to return to the future soon. Admitting their temporal origins had not made things any easier, and neither had Emma pointing out the everlasting connection between Belle and Rumpelstiltskin.


	5. Chapter 5

 

Belle heaved a long sigh, looking across at Rumpelstiltskin and Bae as the grey light of morning began to creep into the cottage. She did not have much time left in quiet contemplation; sheep-owners like Rumpel would be up at dawn to see to their livestock. Still, she wanted to take stock of this moment whilst she had it. To see Rumpel so calm and peaceful, as if there was nothing in his world out of place, well, it wasn’t something that she had been able to see back in the future, not for a long time at least.

It broke her heart to know of the future in store for both of them, especially given their current straitened circumstances, with the threat of ogres still looming on the horizon. Everything looked bleak for them now, and Belle knew that it would only continue to get bleaker. She had come from the future, but she couldn’t offer them any kind of hope or optimism, knowing everything as she did. She had been glad of Emma’s quick-thinking, even though she knew that her friend was still mourning Neal’s death and was now confronted with his younger self.

She hadn’t been able to sleep in spite of the soft sheepskin rugs that Rumpel had given her and Emma as makeshift beds for the night. She had kept expecting to be swept back up in the portal at any moment, and the longer it took for anything magical to happen, the more agitated she became.

Belle sighed. She couldn’t stay here. Their need to get back to their own timeline aside, she couldn’t stay here with Rumpel any longer. The more they talked, the more she got to know this version of the man she loved, and the more she found that he was not as different to her Rumpel in the future as perhaps the future version would like to believe. Everything that she loved about her Rumpel was still here in this one. Of course it was, they were the same person, and whilst the Dark One may have changed him, it could not have changed him so fundamentally as to make him unrecognisable to the man he was before. She had always said that she had been able to see the good in him, the man behind the beast.

Now she could see that man clearly, and he was awakening feelings in her that she could not quite explain away. She loved her Rumpel, and this Rumpel of the past was her Rumpel, but also was not. As she had said to Neal after her Rumpel had sacrificed himself to Pan, she loved all of him, even the parts that belonged to the darkness. This Rumpel had no parts that belonged to the darkness; such a large part of the experiences that had made him who he was had not happened.

There had been a time in her past, when she had been younger and naiver, when she would have given anything to have this version of Rumpel. When she had first met Regina in the forest on that fateful trip to fetch straw, she had loved Rumpel, certainly, but she had always held him to some kind of unattainable ideal, one that was quite possibly just a few feet away from her now. But the more she had come to know her Rumpel, the more she realised that the darkness was a part of him and that she had fallen in love with him because of it, rather than in spite of it. And now, here she was, completely unable to make sense of her feelings, and wondering if feeling so strongly towards this version of Rumpel was in some way dishonest towards her Rumpel back home in the future.

“Hey. Are you ok? You look like a wet weekend? I mean, obviously, we have quite a lot to be despondent about, but you were happier than this last night.”

Emma had roused and was stretching out her arms, looking over at Belle and by proxy their night’s hosts.

“I just keep thinking about all the hell that they’re going to have to go through and knowing that I can’t warn them about any of it because it’ll mess with the timeline,” Belle muttered. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for you, thinking about Neal.”

Emma sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “I think it’s actually easier for me because I never knew Neal as Bae. I only ever knew him as Neal; I first met him when he was already grown up. Bae’s a kid, and he’s called Bae, and I never knew him like this, so in my mind, they’re two different people. I’ve been able to reconcile the fact that Neal was Rumpelstiltskin’s son, but I’ve never really been able to put him and Bae together into the same person. Whereas for you, it’s harder, because future-Rumpel and past-Rumpel look exactly the same. It must be harder for you to keep the two of them apart.”

“Oh, you have no idea. But all the same, I do find myself missing my version. It’s not that I miss the darkness per se, but it’s had such an influence on the man he became, and the man I ultimately fell in love with.”

Across the cottage, Belle saw Rumpelstiltskin beginning to stir, and she abruptly stopped talking before they could be overheard and inadvertently change the future some more.

“We need to get out of here,” she said simply. “I don’t think it will do us any good to stay here any longer. The less attachment, the better.”

She could feel something else too, something vaguely magical in the air that had not been there last night. Belle had spent enough time in the Dark Castle to be able to pick up on things like that, and they gave her an unmistakeable feeling of unease, the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. She was feeling the same thing now.

“Maybe we ought to go back to the field,” Emma said. “If the portal’s going to open up again, then it will probably open up in the same place.”

It was sound reasoning, and it wasn’t as if they had any other ideas.  

Belle looked across at Rumpel and Bae. “I don’t want to leave without saying goodbye, although I think that something’s changing. I can feel it in the air.”

Emma raised an eyebrow, unconvinced, but then she shrugged her acceptance. “You’ve been around magic a hell of a lot longer than I have.”

Across the cottage, Rumpel was stirring, and he gave them a slightly disbelieving look when he woke fully to find them sitting at the table.

“I’d almost convinced myself that you were a dream,” he muttered.

“Sorry. We’re still here.”

“No, don’t be sorry. I’m glad it wasn’t a dream.”

Belle smiled. “Well, at any rate, we’re going to get out of your hair soon. I think that the portal is going to take us back any time now, and we want to go back to the fields where it first dropped us off.”

“You really don’t want it opening up in here,” Emma added. “The roof would not survive.”

Rumpel glanced up at the thatch and gave a mute nod of agreement. He seemed saddened to see them leaving, and Belle felt a pang of sympathy for him. They had been rare ones to offer him kindness in his harsh life, and now they were leaving almost as soon as they had arrived.

A look from Emma had her steeling herself against the feeling. She’d already said that she had to leave before she became too attached, and this made it more obvious than ever.

Rumpel and Bae accompanied them out into the field; Rumpel needed to tend to the sheep anyway and Belle wanted to spend every last moment with him that she could before she was transported back to her present time. She missed her Rumpel, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t going to miss this one as well when she left him. There was comfort in the knowledge that this man was still inside Rumpel somewhere, and he had not completely forgotten the life that he’d had before the Dark One.

Something was definitely going to happen, and soon. There was a buzzing in Belle’s ears that could only have been magical, and it was getting closer. She shook her head, trying to get rid of the annoying sound, but it was set to stay. As they reached the field that they’d landed in so unceremoniously the day before, she turned to Rumpel and Bae.

“Thank you so much for everything that you’ve done for us whilst we’ve been trapped here,” she said. “I know that I’ll never forget your kindness and hospitality.” If she didn’t know better she’d say that Rumpel was blushing under the compliment.

“Bae and I won’t forget you, either,” he said.

In a way, Belle wished that they would, then at least she would be assured that nothing would have changed. She hadn’t intended to, but she couldn’t help going over and throwing her arms around Rumpel, kissing his cheek.

“Until we meet again,” she said.

“Whenever in the future that might be,” Rumpel agreed. It felt good to be leaving him on a positive note. Although Belle knew that there was so much heartache yet to come for him, she knew that love and happiness would be within his reach in time. She ruffled Bae’s hair in farewell and moved away to stand with Emma in the middle of the field.

The ringing in Belle’s ears was getting louder and louder. If there was ever an opportune time for a portal to appear out of nowhere and sweep her up, it was now, or else she wouldn’t be able to hear herself think. Finally, the sound was strong enough that it was definitely not coming from inside her own head, and a glance across at Emma showed that she could hear it too. She reached across and grabbed Emma’s hand. They’d come through the first portal together and they were going to go back together; she’d never be able to live with herself if she accidentally left Emma in the past.

A little further away, Rumpel and Bae were gazing up at the sky with mute horror, Bae hiding behind his father’s legs. Belle followed their sight line, and even she couldn’t help a gasp as the portal exploded into life above them, the same pillar of flame-like magic that it had been before in the barn. She had just enough time to see Rumpel push Bae behind him, acting as a shield against the terrible unknown, before the portal engulfed her and Emma.

Belle closed her eyes and prayed that whatever happened now, they’d end up back where they started.

X

Going through the portal wasn’t any pleasanter the second time it happened, and this time there were even further worries going through Belle’s mind. The first time, she’d been scared of the unknown that awaited her at the other end of the portal, but she’d accepted that there wasn’t a lot she could do about it and just hoped for the best.

This time there still wasn’t a lot she could do about the outcome, but she was even more worried of what she might find. If the future that she was returning to was not the same as the one she had left in the first place, then she knew that it was the result of whatever it she had done in the past, and she would not know whether the changes were for good or ill. Moreover, if she and Emma arrived in the apocalypse, they would have no way of returning to the past to put right everything that they’d changed.

Belle closed her eyes, trying not to think about it and hoping against hope that everything was going to be all right. Surely they hadn’t told Rumpel and Bae anything that would hopelessly alter history. They’d left them rather hopeful, rather than giving them anything bleak to think about and try to avoid.

The roar of the magic in her ears died away, and she landed on the ground with a horrible thud, her teeth jarring in her head.

“I’m never going to get used to that,” she muttered as she got to her feet and began to brush herself down.

“Well, with any luck, that was the last time you’ll ever accidentally time travel and you won’t have to get…”

Emma’s voice tailed off and Belle glanced over to her, following her sight line. She was looking up at the ceiling of the barn. Or, what had been the barn ceiling. There was nothing there now. There wasn’t even a barn. Whilst the portal blast would have had some destructive effect and Belle would not have expected to see very much ceiling, she would have expected to see something. Not just an open expanse of grass.

“Did we come back to the correct time?” Emma asked. Belle felt her heart leap to her mouth. She was sure that they had come back to the correct year and the correct realm, but what they had changed in the past might be coming back to haunt them in ways they could never have predicted.

“Erm…”

The small voice from behind her made Belle spin on her heel, her blood freezing in her veins.

They’d changed the past all right.

They’d brought Rumpel and Bae back to the present with them.

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

For several seconds, no-one moved or spoke. Rumpel and Bae were looking around their new surroundings with nervous bewilderment, and Emma and Belle were looking at each other with increasing panic. When Belle had feared a changed future as a result of what they had done in the past, she had never dreamed that they would have changed the past so thoroughly as to remove two people from it, and the worst thing was that they’d done so entirely accidentally. 

“Is it bad that I’m still more concerned about where the barn’s gone?” Emma asked faintly. “I can really only deal with one bombshell at a time right now.”

Belle nodded. “No, I agree. You worry about the barn. I’ll take care of the unintentional stowaways.” Again, she looked around at the lack of building around them. “I dread to think what else may have changed. If we’ve removed Rumpel and Bae from their own timeline then any number of things could have gone wrong, especially because we were so far back in the past, before they had any interaction with any of the people here in the present.”

“We’re still here, though,” Emma pointed out. “So that must account for something. We haven’t randomly poofed out of existence, so whatever happened in the history we just altered, it can’t have been too bad.”

Belle shuddered at the thought of poofing out of existence and decided that she really didn’t want to think about all the unintended consequences of their travel just yet. Instead, she went over to Rumpel and Bae. Bae was clinging to his father in a limpet grip, face buried in his legs, and they were both shaking from their ordeal. 

“Hey, it’s ok,” Belle said gently, touching Rumpel’s arm. “It’s all right now, it’s all over.”

Rumpel looked around, and Belle could see the blind panic in his face at finding himself in completely unfamiliar surroundings. 

“Where are we?” he asked, choked. “This isn’t the Frontlands.”

“No. We’re in the future. Well, the present for me and Emma. This is where we came from when we came through the portal to your time and place. It’s brought us back to where we started from.”

“We’re not in the Enchanted Forest anymore?”

Rumpel was almost hyperventilating in his fear, and Belle cupped his face. 

“Breathe,” she said. “Just breathe. You’re safe here, I swear. You and Bae are both going to be safe with me. I really am so sorry about this.” She knew that the platitudes couldn’t exactly make up for being unceremoniously ripped out of one’s simple life and dumped in an entirely different time and place, but it was the only thing that she could think of to say. “We’ll get everything sorted out; I promise.”

She had no idea how they’d do it, but she had hope. There were enough magic users in the town that they ought to be able to cobble something together. At least, she hoped there were enough magic users in the town. She hoped that there was still a town, full stop. 

With a horrible sinking feeling, she wondered if her Rumpel would be here now that she’d brought him from the past. There was absolutely no reason why he should be here, but she could try and hope that perhaps they hadn’t screwed things up quite as royally as they seemed to have done.

She held Rumpel’s wide brown eyes steadily, determined not to show any fear of her own, no matter how much she might have been feeling it inside, and gradually, his breathing evened out. He took her hands where they still rested on his cheeks, but he made no attempt to remove them. 

“Thank you,” he whispered. 

Belle smiled. “It’s the least I can do. I know that you can be brave about this, Rumpel. I already know how brave you can be. I know you can get through this too.”

He gave the briefest of weak smiles, and let go of her hands as Bae prised himself away from his legs and finally looked around at the place they’d landed in. 

“Emma! Emma!”

It was David’s voice, and Belle didn’t think that she’d ever been so glad to hear it. A moment later, she saw him cresting the hill, Regina hot on his heels. She didn’t think that she’d ever be glad to see Regina, but right now, anyone with any understanding of magic was going to be a blessing and seeing that people who’d been around before their time jump were still around after it was very comforting. 

“Emma, what happened?” David asked, at the same time as Emma ran over to him with an exclamation of “Dad! You’re still here! What’s happening?” and Regina stopped in her tracks staring bug-eyed at Rumpel and Bae. Belle stepped between them neatly; they were already shaken up enough as it was without suffering the indignity of being turned into a zoo attraction. 

“We saw the portal open up,” David explained, “and I was on my way to come and investigate when everything started to, well… You can see for yourself.”

The group of them moved away from the barn site and towards the edge of the hill, looking down over the town. It was still there, just about. There was a haze of magic over it, pulsing in misty multicolour, and looking up, Belle could see it pulsing above their heads as well if she squinted. Half of the buildings in the town had vanished at random: Granny’s diner had gone, but the inn was still there. Belle was incredibly relieved to see that the pawn shop was still standing, although whether it had an occupant was another matter. Something in the back of her mind wondered what would happen if Rumpel’s past version and present version of himself should meet. Would that cause even more problems? She shook her head; she had to establish whether her Rumpel was even around before worrying about introducing him to himself from the past. 

There was a pulse of magic and the diner reappeared at the same time as the Sheriff’s station vanished, and behind them, the barn, complete with blown-out roof from the portal, crashed back into existence. 

“It’s been doing this for the last hour,” David explained. “It’s not just the buildings that keep popping in and out of existence. It’s the people, too.”

“Is Mom ok?” Emma asked quickly. 

David nodded. “She was when I left her. We’ve lost Ruby and three of the dwarfs.”

“This is all our fault.” Emma sighed. “It wasn’t even on purpose, and we’ve managed to do… I don’t even know what we’ve managed to do.”

“It’s a temporal anomaly,” Regina said, although she didn’t appear to be paying any attention to the conversation at all, still mesmerised by Rumpel and Bae. “Whatever you changed in the past… Which I think I can guess at considering the two new additions to the town’s population… It’s changed something so fundamental that time itself can’t work out what the future ought to be like.” She gestured for Belle to follow her out of Rumpel and Bae’s earshot. 

“You pulled Rumpelstiltskin out of his time stream before he became the Dark One?” she hissed. 

“It wasn’t exactly intentional! We had no idea where the portal was going to take us back to, and we didn’t know that it was going to have quite such a wide radius when it scooped us back up to bring us home!”

Regina sighed. “Well, that certainly explains why the universe is throwing a fit at the moment and why Storybrooke can’t seem to decide whether it exists or not. Rumpelstiltskin is so fundamental to all of our stories; the Dark One has influenced so much during his time that he’s probably touched all of our lives, and he’s been around for so long that it’s uncertain whether any of us would even be here without him.”

“So why _are_ we all still here?” Belle asked. “I mean, if it weren’t for Rumpel’s intervention in the second ogre wars in the Marchlands, I very much doubt that I’d be around today. I’d have been slaughtered like the people of Avonlea.”

“That’s where it gets complicated.” Regina looked around at the gathered people on the hillside and addressed the group as a whole. “I think that we ought to get somewhere less exposed. Or at least somewhere with chairs, even if they might disappear from under us at any moment. Mary Margaret will be getting worried that we’ve poofed into nothingness.”

“Am I going to poof into nothingness, Papa?” Bae asked fearfully. Rumpel just looked to Belle for guidance, but she had none to give. 

“No,” Regina said. For all her misdeeds, she was generally pretty good with little boys. “You and your Papa are about the only people who aren’t going to poof into nothingness. I’ll explain later,” she added on seeing Belle’s incredulous expression.

The group made their way down to where the cars were parked; amazingly Emma’s bug was still there. Rumpel and Bae were rather alarmed by the sight, and Belle remembered what life had been like for her when she had first got out of the asylum and regained her memories of the Enchanted Forest, entering into a world that she had absolutely no knowledge of. 

“It’s a horseless carriage,” she explained. “It moves by itself. Don’t worry, it’s very safe.”

Having landed in an unknown world in the middle of what was obviously a catastrophe for the future travellers, Rumpel and Bae just went along with everything that they were being herded towards, no matter how scared they might have been. 

“I trust you,” Rumpel said to her as she got Bae’s seatbelt fastened in the back of the bug. “I know that you wouldn’t do anything that would put Bae or me in danger. So, although this is a frightening new future world that you’ve brought us to, I know that if you’re here, we’ll be all right.”

Belle took his hand. “I promise that I will keep you safe,” she said. “For as long as I’m here, I won’t let anything happen to you or Bae. We will get this sorted out. David’s a good man, he’s Emma’s father, and he was a great king back in the Enchanted Forest before we came to this land. Regina’s an incredibly powerful magician; she should be able to help us.”

Rumpel thankfully didn’t ask how come David and Emma looked the same age. Presumably he’d seen enough magical shenanigans already today that he wasn’t going to question anything anymore. 

The journey back into what remained of the town was a tense, silent one. Belle was desperate to hear what Regina had to say and all of the further explanations; although she was pleased to know that Rumpel and Bae were safe from vanishing, there were myriad other questions on her mind that were becoming more pressing. 

Mary Margaret was waiting for them on the steps of City Hall, her still-unnamed son in her arms.

“So far it’s the only building that hasn’t vanished at least once,” she said. “Of course, that probably means it’ll be the next to go, but I thought I’d take my chances…” 

Her voice tailed off on seeing Rumpel and Bae. 

“Don’t even ask,” Emma muttered. “It was an accident, ok?”

Regina ushered them all into the hall and unlocked the main meeting room, gesturing for them all to enter. Belle hung back with Rumpel and Bae. 

“I’m really not sure that it’s a good idea for you to be part of this,” she said to them. “Most of it will go over your heads anyway, but I’m already concerned by how much of the future you’re absorbing for if we ever do manage to return you to your own time.” She really didn’t want Rumpel to hear anything about the Dark One, the fact that the Dark One was, or at least would be, him, or the fact that his son was dead. 

Rumpel nodded and gave a grimace, rubbing his forehead. 

“Are you all right?” Belle asked. 

“Just a headache. I think it must be down to going through the portal.”

She really didn’t want to leave him and Bae alone in this strange new land; she’d promised that she would protect them, after all. In the end, she ushered them into the meeting room and settled them on chairs in one corner. Regina had sourced some toys from somewhere, either out of nowhere or retrieving some of Henry’s old ones, and soon Bae was happy enough playing on the floor whilst Rumpel supervised. Belle took her seat at the table. 

“Because you two went through the portal, and because this Rumpel and Bae have come through with you, you’ve become fixed points in time,” Regina explained. “That means that of all us here in the town, you four are the only ones who won’t vanish. You’ll always be here, because coming through the portal and causing all of the ripples in time means that no matter what, you always have to exist.”

Emma and Belle looked at each other. Being the only fully real people in the town was a big responsibility. 

“Wait,” Emma said. “Surely if I have to exist, then David and Mary Margaret have to exist too in order for me to even be here.”

Regina shook her head. “No, it doesn’t work like that. You and Belle have been taken out of time; in effect you exist in a different dimension to the rest of us now.”

“I’m not even going to try and understand that, I’m just going to go along with it. Is there anything that we can do to put this right and get everyone back on the same plane of existence?”

Regina shrugged. “We need to correct the timeline,” she said. “If we had the ability to recreate Zelena’s portal, then it would be easy, but we don’t. The entire point of the portal was that it broke the laws of magic. It shouldn’t have been possible in the first place.” She paused. “Well, of course, there is one person who’d know how to go about it.” 

Everyone in the room looked over at Rumpel, and Belle’s heart leapt to her mouth. 

“Is he… My present Rumpel… Gold... Is he still here? He’s the one person I would certainly expect to have gone.”

Mary Margaret nodded. “Yes. Gold’s still in the pawnshop, as far as I know.”

Belle breathed a sigh of relief, but as she looked over at Rumpel and Bae again, she didn’t know quite how relieved she ought to be. Things were about to get an awful lot more complicated…


	7. Chapter 7

Belle was nervous as the ever-increasing group made their way from the town hall towards the pawn shop. She and Emma had joked about meeting themselves in the past and what chaos that could cause, but Rumpel meeting himself in the future was an entirely different matter. Not only where there untold repercussions on the timeline, she didn’t know what either of their reactions would be. Especially her present-Rumpel’s reaction to seeing Bae as a child again, so soon after losing Neal. 

She shook her head. She was going to have to think of a better way of distinguishing them in her mind than going by past and present. Perhaps it would be easier to refer to her present-Rumpel as Gold like the rest of them were doing. It felt foreign to her mind; she’d never known him during the curse when he’d been Gold, she’d only ever known him as Rumpel, but he’d always answered to both. 

She glanced across at Rumpel, who was rubbing his forehead again, the frown lines still etched into his brow. She hoped that the headache was nothing serious and just a side effect of going through the portal, although she was perturbed at not having similar symptoms herself, however glad she might be to be suffering no ill effects from her travels. 

He caught her eye presently and gave the briefest of nervous smiles. She’d promised that nothing would happen to him whilst he was here, and he knew that if he stuck with her then she would do her utmost to make sure that everything was all right. He had placed his and Bae’s lives into her hands without question, completely trusting. Belle only hoped that she could reward his faith in her. 

They reached the pawn shop, relieved to find it still standing and in no imminent danger of vanishing into the ether at any point. It was with a slight pang of sadness that Belle turned to the source of the magical shimmer in the corner of her eye and saw the library slowly vanish. It might be back again soon, but there was no way to tell for certain. The only way to get everything back to the way it had been before was to sort out the temporal mess that they’d got themselves into, and for that they needed Gold. 

“I’ll go in and explain everything,” Belle said, grabbing the door handle before anyone else could barge in unannounced. “It think it will all be easier coming from me.” She looked again at Rumpel. “I won’t be long, but I really think this is something that I need to do alone.”

She stepped into the pawn shop, the bell over the door sounding horribly loud in the quiet of the steadily vanishing town. 

“Rumpel?” she called. “Rumpel, are you there?”

“Belle!” 

He rushed out of the back room and Belle ran to meet him, throwing her arms around him and breathing in his comforting presence in a way she couldn’t do with his counterpart from the past who’d only just met her. 

“I thought I’d lost you,” he murmured, pressing his face in close against her neck. “When I saw the time portal open up, I never dreamed that you’d be the one in it, but then you didn’t answer your phone, and then the town started vanishing.”

Belle reached into her pocket for her cell, but it was dead. Time travel to alternate realms and vastly different time periods evidently didn’t get along with the Land Without Magic’s technology. 

“Are you all right? Where have you been? Were you in the time portal?”

Belle nodded. “Yes. Emma and I were drawn into it, but we’re back now. It re-opened after a few hours and brought us home. As you can see though, we changed something fundamental and now....”

“And now it appears as if the world is trying to end.”

“Yes.” Belle sighed. As much as she wanted to stay here in his arms forever, the crowd of people outside the pawn shop could not be denied, and they were all waiting on her to say her piece. Likewise, the presence of a second Rumpel was painfully obvious. “Rumpel… Emma and I, well, we were in the Frontlands when we landed. We were in your time, back before you became the Dark One. And it was a complete accident, but… We brought you and Bae back with us.”

“What?” Rumpel’s voice was flat, the words sounding choked. “That can’t be… Belle, that can’t be possible. There can’t be two of us here at the same time.”

“There are.” Belle stepped aside so that Rumpel had an unobscured view of the window, and her heart broke when she heard his pained little gasp on seeing the spinner and his son standing outside. 

Rumpel turned on his heel, staggering back into the back room of the shop. Through the window, Belle caught Regina’s pensive expression, but there was no signal that she could give to reassure her. All she could do was get Rumpel through this harrowing experience. 

She let him have a moment alone before stepping through the curtain that led to the back. Rumpel was leaning heavily on the work bench, his eyes closed. 

“Rumpel, please know that it was never my intention to hurt you.”

He nodded. 

“I know, sweetheart. I know you’d never do anything like this on purpose. I just… I need a moment.”

Belle pulled out the chair from under the workbench and gently coaxed Rumpel to sit down on it, crouching in front of him. After a few minutes of stunned silence, he finally gave a sharp bark of humourless laughter. 

“At least I know why the universe is acting the way it is,” he muttered. “I dare say that there won’t be many people who’ll thank you for two Rumpelstiltskins in town.”

“Oh Rumpel.” Belle went up on her knees to hug him. “I know that this is hard for you, but we have to try and fix it. Well, I have to try and fix what I broke in the past, and I need your help. We can’t have people popping in and out of existence forever.”

Rumpel shook his head. “No, because soon they’ll cease to exist at all. The longer my younger self stays here, the more the past without him becomes set, and everything that I’ve influenced in my time will cease to exist. You and Emma will be the only ones left.”

Belle gave a slow nod. “Regina said as much.”

“She’s smarter than I give her credit for sometimes.” Rumpel sighed. “The timeline has to be put right. I - well, the other me - will have to return to where he was when you brought him back.”

“But the portal’s gone, and it was never supposed to be used in the first place. Can you break the laws of magic twice?”

“I have no idea. I haven’t tried it once. We can’t simply recreate Zelena’s spell; the ingredients were unique and are burned out now. Oh Belle, this is something completely unprecedented. In all my years, I’ve never known anything like it.”

He broke off, his words trailing out as he stared off into the middle distance, not seeing Belle at all.

“Rumpel?” He didn’t answer her; he was miles away, lost in his own thoughts. “Rumpel?”

Was this the precursor to him vanishing, either temporarily or for good? Seeing himself from the past here in Storybrooke couldn’t have done the timeline any favours. Although Gold might not know how to fix everything right now, he was certainly their best hope for finding a possible solution with all his wealth of magical experience, and if he vanished now, they were completely done for.

“Rumpel?” Belle waved a hand in front of his face and he came back to her, shaking his head with a little grimace and pressing the heel of his hand hard against his forehead. “Rumpel, are you all right? Are you about to vanish?”

“I don’t think that the people who are vanishing have all that much warning,” he grumbled. “No, I don’t think so. Just a headache, that’s all. It came on so suddenly. Probably as a result of trying to get the timelines straight in my mind. Maybe that’s the real reason why time travel is forbidden by the laws of magic – it’s too confusing for everyone.”

He rubbed his head again and Belle glanced in the direction of the main shop and the people gathered outside.

“Your past-self is suffering from a bad headache as well,” she said.

“I don’t think that’s too surprising.” Gold sighed, closing his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. “He and I are now two versions of the same person occupying the same time. We’ve become a paradox within a paradox and only one of us should be here. Since he’s now a fixed point having come through the portal, I think that he’s probably going to win in the end. We’ve got to get this sorted out before it’s too late.”

Belle nodded her agreement.

“I’m going to take Rumpel and Bae back to the house,” she said. “I think that they could do with some time away from everything that’s going on here, and like you said, there are various people around with malevolent intent who might take advantage of the situation.” She thought back to the scenes that she had witnessed on the Jolly Roger and wondered if it was too much to hope that Hook had vanished out of existence along with the town.

“Yes, it would probably do to keep him from the rest of the town.”

“Will you come with us?”

She was not at all surprised when Gold shook his head, but she’d had to make the offer – more of a plea really. Having found that he was all right and had not vanished, Belle didn’t want to let him out of her sight at all.

“I can’t,” he said. “The more time I spend with myself from the past…”

“It’s ok.” Belle rested her hand on his knee. She needed to hold on to him, almost as if she was absorbing his very essence in case this was the last time that she ever saw him. She hoped against hope that it would not be. “I understand. We don’t want to cause any more problems with the space-time continuum.”

“It’s not that. Well, it’s not just that.” Gold sighed. “Belle… The man out there is the man I used to be, and I can’t bear the reminder of everything that went wrong. I was a good man, once. You’ve seen that for yourself now, the man I used to be. The man I left behind in the pursuit of power. I may have been a coward then, but sometimes I don’t think that I’m any better now; it’s just better hidden. I can’t face that. Not right now. And Bae…”

“Of course.” Belle kicked herself. Naturally, he wouldn’t want to be around little Bae, not after what happened to Neal. It would be too painful for him, and Belle had to respect that. It was different for Belle; Bae was more of a separate person for her, but Gold would still have all the same memories of his son at that age.

“He needs you,” Gold said, his hand closing over Belle’s on his knee. “I need you too, but right now, I think he has more need of you. I remember those times. I know that I would have given anything for a kind soul like yours to help me out…”

He tailed off again, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Rumpel? Are you all right? Can I get you an aspirin or something?”

“No, I think that the only thing that will cure this headache is getting the temporal confusion cleared up. I think I may be able to put some wards in place to keep the shop here so that I can work on a solution. The more I think about it, the more an idea takes shape. Just because Zelena’s ingredients are spent doesn’t mean that others wouldn’t be as effective.”

He jumped up, even more determined in his mission to get everything reversed now that the stakes were so much higher and more personal, and Belle got to her feet beside him, catching his shoulder before he could rush off to consult a book or start making experimental potions. He turned back towards her and Belle slipped her arms around his middle, pulling him in for a long kiss, a fierce one that she would remember for a long time. Who knew how long it would have to last her?

“Just don’t disappear on me,” she said. “Or if you do disappear, make sure that you come back.”

Gold smiled and pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead.

“I promise, Belle. We’ll find a way through this. If Regina has time to spare from whatever emergency plans she might be putting in place to help the town’s vanishing citizens, I’m sure that I could use her assistance. With something this unprecedented, any insight at all is valuable.”

Belle nodded, then gave him one final squeeze, burying her nose in against his jacket and inhaling his scent to keep her going until the next time she saw him – whenever that might be.


	8. Chapter 8

Once she was on her way back to the pink house with Rumpel and little Bae, Belle felt a weight lift off her shoulders. The gravity of their situation was still pressing on her very hard indeed, but now she only had to focus on one thing. As worried as she was about Gold and whether or not he would still be there when she next came to the pawn shop, she knew that there was absolutely nothing she could do to change his outcome, and all she could do was trust that he knew what he was doing.

She hoped that he could find a way to put everything to rights, because if he couldn’t do it, then she was fairly sure that no one could.

“That was me.” Rumpel had not spoken for most of the journey back to the house, and Belle glanced over at him now. He looked pensive, concerned. “Me in the future. The me that you knew before.”

She nodded. “Yes, it was.”

Rumpel did not reply, and Belle had to wonder how he was finding it. She had been more concerned for Gold seeing the man that he had once been, knowing how much he had always held what he perceived to be his previous cowardice in contempt.

Now though, she realised that Rumpel might have just as intense a reaction to seeing his future self, although for different reasons. For all they were the same man, for all they looked the same, they were very different in outward appearance. Gold’s fine suits, despite being from a completely different realm and a completely different time, would nevertheless have been an obvious mark of wealth to his former self. There was also the small matter of his limp, Gold’s now cured with magic but still very visible on Rumpel.

Even just seeing him through the shop window must have been a shock, and whilst Belle wondered what Rumpel thought of his future self, a larger part of her did not want to know. In her mind, they were the same person and yet different at the same time. Having been through so much in the intervening three hundred years, of course they were going to be different, but maybe to each other, they were unrecognisable.

She wondered if Rumpel was scared or intrigued by the man that he was to become. Not that it would make much difference in the long run. If they were to put the timeline to rights, then Rumpel could not remember anything of what had occurred since Belle and Emma first came into his life. Any warnings or lessons from his older self would necessarily be forgotten.

Belle found that she didn’t mind that. She had fallen in love with Rumpel towards the end of his current timeline, and despite their ups and downs, and despite all of the heartbreak that they had endured, she would not change him for the world. He would not be the man he was today had this poor spinner not been through everything that he had, as much as Belle wanted to spare him that pain.

“I didn’t see Bae,” Rumpel said presently. “I was sure that I would recognise him, even if he was an adult.”

Belle’s heart pounded painfully in the back of her throat. She couldn’t tell him what would happen to Bae in the future. That would just be cruel. She glanced over her shoulder to where he was dozing in the back seat of the car.

“I’m sure that he’s around somewhere,” she said, wishing that it were true. “After all, people are vanishing and reappearing with great regularity. He’ll turn up.”

Rumpel nodded and rubbed his forehead again. The headache seemed to be getting worse, and Belle knew that it would be affecting Gold as well. The two of them were linked across the years; what one of them experienced, the other one would by proxy.

“I’ll find you some aspirin,” she said as she let them into the house. Bae had woken up and was toddling along after his father, gazing in dumbfounded wonderment at all the curios of the modern world that Gold’s house had to offer. She gave them a quick tour and a brief introduction to the concepts of electricity and modern plumbing, finally getting them settled in the kitchen with tea and toast with honey. Bae was fascinated by the toaster and Rumpel had to keep pulling his fingers back where they were constantly creeping towards the slots to see what magic made the bread hot.

“No, Bae. It’s dangerous. You’ll burn yourself.”

“It’s magic!” Bae exclaimed, and Belle had to smile. Bae was so curious about this new world that he had found himself in, and once he had found his feet and was reassured that his Papa wasn’t going anywhere, he was excited about exploring everything that his new surroundings had to offer, showing no fear.

“When you’re done eating, I’ll show you your room,” Belle said, more to Bae than to Rumpel, in the hope of distracting him from the toaster before he could cause himself an injury. For all his wide-eyed wonder, Bae was showing all the signs of tiredness, and the day was wearing on. “I think it would be best if you slept in the spare room; I’ll just be down the corridor.”

“It’s all right, really,” Rumpel tried to protest, but Belle just fixed him with a look that had always worked in the Dark Castle and that worked again now.

“The very least that I can do for you is give you a nice warm bed, Rumpel,” she said.

“I know, but you’ve already done so much, and everything here’s so _nice_.” He still couldn’t get to grips with the idea that this was his home in the future, that his fortunes could have changed so much to be living in such luxury – even though so much in the house was a foreign concept to him, he could still clearly see the marks of wealth and taste. “We wouldn’t want to make anything dirty.”

“As I explained before, we have plenty of hot running water,” Belle said gently. “You’re welcome to take a bath if you’d like, and I can find you some clean clothes. When we have more than we need, it makes sense to share it.”

Considering that Rumpel had shared his own meagre reserves with her and Emma, it more than made sense, and although still a little wary, he agreed. Belle went to run a bath and set about finding some suitable clothes. There was nothing really small for Bae, so she settled on one of Gold’s undershirts and some boxer shorts, and pyjamas for Rumpel.

Considering that they were the same person, the pyjamas looked ridiculously big on him when he returned to the kitchen having got Bae settled for the night. Even though Belle had always thought of him as a man on the small side, it just went to show much difference a couple of hundred years of proper nutrition and a life away from the hardships of poverty could do. If they sent Rumpel and Bae back to their own timeline with a good meal inside them, then that would be something.

“Thank you,” Rumpel said, coming to sit down at the table with her. “I… I don’t think that I can thank you enough for everything. This is all so… overwhelming.”

“It’s nothing,” Belle assured him.

“I suppose I just can’t understand why… how…” Rumpel sighed. “I don’t deserve all the kindness that you’re showing me, Belle. I have nothing to offer you in return.”

“Oh Rumpel.” Belle reached out to touch his cheek, noting how he leaned in against her palm almost without realising that he was doing it. She wondered just how long it had been since anyone had touched him with care and affection like this. Milah may only just have left him, but they had certainly not been on good terms for a long while beforehand. “It’s my pleasure. You took care of Emma and me when we were trapped in the Enchanted Forest, and now I’m taking care of you and Bae whilst you’re trapped here. I know you, Rumpel. I may not know you, personally, as well as I will know you in the future, but I do know that you deserve to be loved and cared for. Everyone deserves that, and you especially. People don’t do the right thing for some kind of reward. They do it because it's right.”

“Belle, I think you might just be the most remarkable person I’ve ever met. And the scariest thing is that I don’t know whether or not I’ve met you before.”

Belle’s brow furrowed and she stroked his cheek where she was still touching him. He showed no signs of pulling away, and the motion seemed to soothe him. “What do you mean?”

Rumpel rubbed his forehead with the slightest of grimaces that he tried hard to hide quickly.

“It’s not just this headache that’s bothering me,” he admitted. “I keep having flashes… Like memories, but not, and I don’t think that they can be daydreams. I don’t think that I could dream up the things I’m seeing.”

“What kind of things?”

“I see you,” Rumpel said. “But not as you are now. You’re dressed as a fine lady, in golden silk and jewels… Not that you’re not a fine lady now, of course, but your dress… It’s from the old world, and I know I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life.”

Belle nodded slowly. “I did own such a dress, yes. I was wearing it when we first met – in my past and your future.”

“Belle, do you think I’m seeing the future?”

“I… I don’t know. This isn’t something that I’ve ever encountered before. I think that maybe these are memories of another life. They’re glimpses of the future for you, but for your future self, they’re memories. You’re the same person, so maybe you’re sharing these memories now. Your future self is experiencing the same headaches as you because there are two of you existing in the same space. It makes sense that other things might pass across the connection, like memories. Although, obviously, your future self has all the memories that you do, so in this case it would only affect you, memories that you haven’t lived yet, but will in your future.”

“Will I?” Rumpel looked around the room at the overwhelming present that he had found himself in, looking scared and dejected. “I’m beginning to think that there’s no hope of us ever getting home. And even if we do, how can we be sure that everything will happen in the same way that it has done? If you and I have already met, even if, by some miracle, you can take me and Bae back to exactly the same time that we left, then the future has already changed.”

Belle couldn’t deny it, he certainly had a point.

“I’m sure that we can make it right. You may not realise it yet, but your knowledge of magic is second to none.”

“I don’t know the first thing about magic.” He paused. “Well, that’s not strictly true. I know that it tends to end in disaster.”

Belle thought about the limited experiences of magic that this Rumpel had, just his traumatic trips through portals to and from Neverland courtesy of his father, and the seer’s prophecy that would cause him so much pain. There really was no wonder that he was so pessimistic about their chances.

“It will come with time. You’ll see.”

Maybe he did see. Belle’s blood ran cold. If he was seeing memories from his future, then who knew what he might be seeing. Becoming the Dark One, being separated from Bae, reuniting with him only to lose him again and again.

“Rumpel… Are you seeing anything else in these visions of the future that you’re having?” she asked quickly.

“For the most part it’s just you,” Rumpel admitted. His face had gone very red, and Belle thought it incredibly charming. “I think you ground me. Thank you.”

Belle smiled. “You’re very welcome.” She took both his hands in hers where they were sitting limply on the table. “I will ground you for as long as you need me to. But try not to think about the visions too much. I don’t think that there’s anything to be concerned about.”

She would never forgive herself if he saw something that he didn’t want to happen and set about changing the course of history in order to prevent it. Even keeping him focussed on her was not the best idea, considering the number of times that she and Rumpel had been separated over the course of their too-short time together. At least he knew that whatever might have happened in the past between them, they were on course for a happy ending now, which was sadly more than could be said for his relationship with Neal, cruelly cut short before amends could be made.

“Maybe you’ll feel better if you rest,” she said. “It’s been a very long day for all of us, and I’m sure that you could use a bed as much as I could.”

Rumpel nodded. “Yes, you’re right.” He rose from the table, and Belle stood with him, holding out his stick. “Thank you for everything that you’ve done.”

There was still wonder in his voice, as if despite her words he still could not believe that she would do so much for him and Bae, and it made Belle’s heart melt.

She leaned in close, putting her hands gently on his shoulders and pressing a soft kiss to his cheek, which flamed even redder than before in response.

“You are worth it, Rumpel,” she said. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Rendered speechless by this tenderness, Rumpel nodded and left the room as fast as his leg could take him. Belle wondered if she had been too presumptuous, but she felt for this Rumpel in the same way she felt for the man she had known all this time. Despite their differences, they were the same person, and she was finding the lines in her mind between them beginning to blur a little.

Belle sighed. That was a complication that this whole temporal mess could certainly do without.


	9. Chapter 9

The next morning, Belle woke up feeling unsurprisingly anxious. Although she knew that she, Rumpel and Bae would not be among those who might have vanished overnight, she had no idea how much of the town might be left, and she had no idea whether or not Gold would still be around. 

He had not come home last night, and she couldn’t tell if that was because he wanted to spend as little time in his past counterpart’s company as possible to spare both of them the headache, or whether it was his Dark One’s insomnia and hyper-fixation kicking in again as he tried to find a way to fix the problem. 

Or if it was because he no longer existed. 

Last night, Belle had spent what felt like hours lying staring at the ceiling, thinking of Bae and Rumpel in the room just along the corridor. More than once, she had crept out of bed and tiptoed to the spare room, opening the door just a crack and peeking in to check that the two of them were ok. Both had seemed to be spark out asleep, and Belle had been glad that they were able to rest after the incredibly tumultuous day that they’d experienced. She hadn’t anticipated getting any sleep herself, and sheer exhaustion finally overtook her in the small hours when she realised she’d been awake for far longer than she’d ever been awake before. 

Still, now she was awake again, and incredibly alert with it. There was going to be no use in trying for an extra five minutes; her brain was demanding action as soon as possible. She got up and looked out of the window. The house was set away from the rest of the town, in what suburbs a place like Storybrooke possessed, and she couldn’t see most of the buildings, but the clocktower rising in the distance showed her that the library was back. Seeing it gave her hope, that no matter what happened, they could get everyone back soon. All was not completely lost. 

She dressed quickly, wanting to be ready for whatever the day might throw at her and needing to get out and see Gold as soon as possible and reassure herself that whatever wards he might have put in place to protect himself and his research had worked. Making morning tea, she dithered. She wanted to let Rumpel and Bae sleep for as long as possible, hoping that sleep would at least bring Rumpel some respite from his headache, but she didn’t think that it would be a good idea to leave them alone in the house in this strange new world. With a smile, she remembered the letter that Gold had left for her on her first morning in this new world, waking up with all the memories of their old world but nothing from the new. 

Memories brought her mind full circle. If Rumpel was experiencing memories from his possible future, then it was entirely plausible that he would have some memories from Gold’s time in Storybrooke under the curse, and he would be able to fend for himself here more than she gave him credit for, but she didn’t want to count on that. 

Belle settled down to write some instructive notes, but she’d only got as far as the toaster before there was a knock on the front door. 

It was Emma, looking as worn down as Belle felt. 

“How’s it going?” she asked as Belle stood back to let her in. “How are the travellers?”

“Ok. They’re settling in well. Still overwhelmed by this world, but we managed to stop little Bae sticking his fingers in the toaster.” She decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea to mention Rumpel’s memory confusion just yet. “What are things like in town? I haven’t heard from Gold.”

“It’s so weird to hear you calling him that.”

Belle shrugged. “I need to be able to tell them apart as much as you do. More so, I think.”

“True enough.” Emma sighed, following Belle back into the kitchen and accepting the cup of coffee that Belle made for her. “Things are pretty much the same as yesterday. Things still keep disappearing and reappearing, and people keep puffing in and out of existence. It looks like it’s speeding up now, though. Things are happening more frequently. Ruby’s back, but we’ve lost Granny.”

“Is Ruby ok? Suddenly vanishing out of existence and then coming back like that must be disorientating.”

“She’s fine, apparently it just felt like she’d blacked out for a second and she had no idea she’d been gone for nearly twenty-four hours.”

Belle nodded. As well as giving them hope that they could get everyone back, it also gave them hope that no one would be completely emotionally traumatised as a result of this temporal confusion. 

“I hope that Gold and Regina have found something,” Emma said. “Considering how much magic there was floating about in the Enchanted Forest, you’d think we’d have an entire army of magicians here able to stop this thing. As it is, there are two of them. Well, and a half if you include me. The fairy-nuns have gone, so we can’t rely on them either. God help us if Gold and Regina go too and it’s up to you and me.”

“I’m sure we’d be able to think of something.” All the same, Belle felt that her optimism was somewhat misplaced. Thinking about the possibility of Regina vanishing brought another, very unwelcome thought to her mind. “How’s Henry?”

“He’s at the loft with Mom and Dad. Still there when I left them this morning.” Emma took in a sharp breath, and for the first time since they had begun this strange adventure together, Belle could see how hard she was working to keep herself together. “We’ve got to stop this, Belle, because I can’t lose him.”

“We won’t,” Belle said firmly. “We’ll find a way to reverse it all and we’ll get everyone we’ve lost back.”

The kitchen door opened at that point and Rumpel’s face peered around it. Belle waved him inside. 

“Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

Rumpel gave a weak smile. “About as well as can be expected in the circumstances. Bae slept well though. He’s still asleep; I think all yesterday’s adventures have exhausted him.” He paused. “I should probably go back up to him; I don’t want him to wake up in a strange place without me. I heard voices.” He nodded to Emma. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” Emma’s voice was just a little too bright, and although Belle could see that Rumpel had definitely picked up on it, he didn’t say anything. Belle jumped up from the kitchen table and set about making some tea for Rumpel. Coffee was one of this world’s wonders that she thought it best not to introduce him to just yet, especially given his lack of sleep.

“How’s your head?” she asked. “Did the Tylenol help?”

Rumpel nodded, then shook his head.

“It’s not that I’m not grateful for your strange little pills, but it’s just the same as it was before.”

Considering the amounts of magic involved, Belle could see why the medicine of a Land Without Magic wouldn’t have been effective, but she’d had to try. She brought the tea over to him and he blew on the surface to cool it before taking a grateful sip, then looking critically at the cup. Belle realised she’d given him the chipped cup out of habit.

“It’s chipped,” he said. “Why does that feel familiar?”

“Another memory that hasn’t happened yet.” Belle didn’t elaborate; there was no sense in rocking the boat just yet. She looked over at Emma, who quirked an eyebrow. They definitely needed to see how Gold and Regina were getting on with a solution to this problem before these far-reaching consequences got out of hand. 

“Rumpel, will you be all right if Emma and I leave you and Bae alone here for a little while?” she asked. “We need to go and see what’s going on.”

Although Rumpel looked a little alarmed at the prospect of being left alone in a house full of modern conveniences that he only had a passing acquaintance with and that might try to kill him, he nodded. Belle was glad; she wanted to keep the two Rumpelstiltskins as far apart from each other as possible in the hope of alleviating their symptoms. 

Rumpel went back upstairs to watch over Bae, and Belle and Emma left the pink house, making their way back down into the town in the bug. The landscape was definitely different to how she’d left it last night, and Belle wondered how many more people had vanished and reappeared. The haze of magic that they’d seen covering the town when they had first arrived back through the portal seemed to have intensified, and Belle wondered how long it would be until it descended completely and swallowed the whole town, leaving only her, Emma, Rumpel and Bae. 

Emma parked up outside the pawn shop and Belle rushed inside ahead of her, anxious to find out if Gold was still there. 

“Is that you, Belle?”

She let out a huge sigh of relief and passed through the curtain into the workroom. Gold looked up from his perusal of a large, dusty crate of potion vials and smiled.

“At least I don’t have to worry about you vanishing without trace,” he said. “I think I’m safe for now.”

“I’m very glad to hear it.” Belle paused, taking in his somewhat dishevelled appearance. “Have you been working all night?” Looking around the workroom, the blankets on the bed seemed undisturbed, and there was certainly enough papers, books and potion paraphernalia scattered around for Gold to have been at it non-stop ever since she left him the previous evening. 

Gold shrugged. “I sent Regina home to get some sleep. Dark Ones don’t need to sleep, and I thought that since time was precious, I ought to keep going.”

“Oh Rumpel.” Belle came over and slipped her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Your head’s already pounding, don’t make it worse.”

“I have to do this, though.” Gold balled his hands up into fists. “I have to fix this; I have to keep working to fix it because the moment I stop to think about it too much, well…”

He didn’t elaborate any further on the statement, but Belle could tell that his mind was going down a dark road that he didn’t want her to follow. She thought back to his words of the previous day, of all the things that he was reminded of by the man that he used to be. 

He shook himself. 

“Still, I think I’ve found something.” He patted the crate and the vials inside chinked. “I think that there may be a way to recreate Zelena’s time portal.” He paused. “You know, if she’d known I had all this at my fingertips, maybe she wouldn’t have gone to such extreme lengths to procure her ingredients before. I can’t decide whether that would have been better or worse.”

Belle sat down beside him at the workbench, peering into the crate and taking out one of the vials. It wasn’t labelled save for a small image of a sword. 

“What are these?”

“Do you remember when you first remembered? When the curse broke and we were in the forest, and I brought magic back to the town?”

Belle nodded, and Gold took back the vial from her with gentle fingers, running his thumb over the label.”

“That was pure magic,” he said. “The magic of true love. All of these things are the bottled essences of pure magic, in various different forms. Love is the most powerful, of course, but there are several different potent emotional concepts that can be bottled if you’ve got the time and the patience. After three hundred years, I amassed both of those things in spades.”

Belle nodded. “So, you think you can use these pure magics to open the portal again?”

“Yes. Zelena’s portal needed embodiments of love, wisdom, courage and innocence.” He held up the vial he’d taken from her. “This is courage. I have wisdom and innocence here too. The problem is love. I used that to bring magic back to the town; it’s spent, and I don’t know the best way to gather more.”

“Surely you can just use the same method as before?” Belle asked. 

“No. Magic’s tricky like that. Once a source has been spent, like this one has, it won’t work again. The original true love magic was created from the entwined hairs of Snow White and Prince Charming, the strongest true love connection I’d seen at the time. Such a method wouldn’t work again. Their love was unique, just as every true love connection is unique, but it was theirs that worked for the spell at the time. Not only would I need a different couple, I’d need a different method of gathering it. That true love magic is now intertwined with all of the magic here in the town. It would have to be completely unique again.”

“Right.” Belle sat back with a sigh. At least they had a plan now, even if they had no idea how to execute it, and the fact that three of the four ingredients they needed were ready made for them was encouraging. If they could only bottle true love again, then they would be home and dry.

Before Belle could make any suggestions, a loud magical shimmer sounded from the front of the shop and Emma raced in through the curtain. 

“Something’s happening out here,” she said. “I think someone’s coming back.”

The shimmering stopped suddenly, and there was a thud, as if someone had been dropped from a height onto the floor, followed by a squashed sounding ‘ouch’.

Emma, Gold and Belle entered the other room to see who had come back to them, and Emma cut off a sharp scream, clamping her hands over her mouth. 

Neal was getting to his feet in the middle of the shop.


End file.
